Sweet Marie: A Song History

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"Sweet Marie" started out as a popular song, with words by Cy Warman and music by Raymon Moore, published in New York in 1893.[1] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Warman wrote the lyric for his wife, and Moore sang it in the 1893 musical comedy Africa, which opened in Cleveland.[2] Success came late: the song caught on only once a replacement singer had taken Moore's place in the show.[3] The song crossed the Atlantic quickly, appearing in a London edition from W. Paxton around 1893.[4] It was soon on record as well: the tenor George J. Gaskin sang it for a seven-inch Berliner disc in September 1894.[5]

Close photograph of an older man in a jacket and tie holding a fiddle and bow against his chest

Doris Ulmann, James Duff, fiddler, Hazard, Kentucky, toned silver print, ca. 1930. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. Shown for its subject; it has no known connection to the song.

The song's movement into folk tradition was, in the Tune Archive's words, "sporadic," and Tommy Jarrell of Mount Airy, North Carolina, is credited there with a set of its verses.[2] The Traditional Ballad Index finds it in tradition in the American South and in Australia, and notes that Percy French reworked it as a parody about a racehorse.[3] Walter Morris sang it to guitar accompaniment for Columbia in Atlanta in November 1926.[6] In Bristol, Tennessee, in August 1927, the Bull Mountain Moonshiners, with fiddle, banjo and two guitars, recorded it for Victor under Ralph Peer's supervision, but both takes were marked to be destroyed.[7] Ira Ford's 1940 collection Traditional Music in America printed the song's words and also gave an "Old-Fashioned Schottische" assembled partly from its melody.[2][8]

The Tune Archive files the melody as an air, march and schottische in D, in standard fiddle tuning.[2] It also has a separate entry, which it describes as a version of the song, though a far-removed one, from the Taylor County, Kentucky, fiddler Walter Lile, whom the folklorist Bruce Greene recorded in 1970; Lile played it in AEae tuning and nearly at breakdown speed.[9] Lile's setting appears in the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes (2011).[9] The Tune Archive also lists a recording by Benton Flippen and the Smokey Valley Boys on their album Fiddler's Dream (Music Maker Relief Foundation, 2003).[2]

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Sources

  1. Johns Hopkins University, Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection: "Raymon Moore's Latest Success. Sweet Marie.".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Sweet Marie (1)".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Sweet Marie".
  4. Victoria and Albert Museum: "Sweet Marie" (sheet music).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Berliner matrix 158. Sweet Marie".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix W143067. Sweet Marie / Walter Morris".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-39748. Sweet Marie / Bull Mountain Moonshiners".
  8. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Old-Fashioned Schottische".
  9. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Sweet Marie (2)".